Violence

Rumbold rightly argues on Pickled Politics that it is difficult to estimate violence in the early modern period- he points to and explains a fascinating debate between Lawrence Stone and James Sharpe in the pages of Past and Present about the question of how much violence there really was. I would suggest you read his piece as I have nothing much to add to its description of the debate. What is worth adding though are two additional reasons why murder rates in particular might not denote levels of violence and secondly why levels of violence might not correlate to psychological feelings of insecurity.

Murder rates might not relate that well to levels of violence because of improved medicine. It is a commonplace of modern discussion of the battlefield in the early modern or medieval period that you were as likely to die from your wounds as you were from a blow which killed you. The same must be true of murder: I would imagine that many died a couple of days after or even more they were murdered. In some cases- where there was internal organ damage for example- I would imagine that the death might not even be described as murder. This both exaggerates the early modern figure- the numbers who died say from a beating would be higher if there was no doctor around with a knowledge of how to deal with head wounds- and it might also diminish that rate: the figure for modern murders includes things that in medieval and early modern times would not have been connected to the original act which led to them.

The psychological point is just as interesting. Imagine you got involved in a fight. If you are a modern city denizen that's probably one of the very few physical encounters that you get involved in: if you were an early modern citizen you would be involved in physical encounters every day- an overwhelmingly rural population would have to for a start cope physically with livestock. Violence in that sense must have been more common- in that violence, physical hardship is more common on a farm or in a field than in a modern office block. Psychologically the way that violence hit people would have been different just because of the different nature of their lives. Pain would have been more common as another example because of the absense of any pain killers- if pain instead of being unpleasant and irregular was a constant unpleasant echo to life itself then you might have a different reaction to the somebody causing you pain. That is not to say that violence would have felt any less terrible: just that it would have felt different and that may effect the perception of the level of it within society.

I can't add to Rumbold's arguments here- I think they are right. What I would argue though is that we can add reasons to suggest that comparison between the early modern and modern periods is difficult. Both because we may be comparing unlike things- incidents that would have been murders in the past may not be now thanks to medicine, incidents that might be now would not be in the past thanks to more sophisticated understandings of what causes death. Also even if levels of violence were higher or lower than now, the impact of that level of violence on people would have been different because of the radically different lives that they lived. As Rumbold argues such doubts are not an indication that we should stop thinking about the historical issues- merely that we should examine and re-examine our assumptions about them. Doing so may well teach us about the way that we understand violence and murder, their place in our society and the trajectory that such crimes are on.

The Body of a Greek God

Greek Gods were not like the 'gods' of the West. Zeus was unlike the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God- he was unlike them both in having colleagues, or either sex, in having a geneaology and a succession, powers limited to a region of the world and his own set of special tools (the thunderbolts). When we turn to look at the Gods of Greece we look at entities which are not the same as our own deities- and thinking about them according to the categorisation that we have developed for whatever God we believe in or oppose may not be useful. Ancient and particularly archaiac Greek polytheism- which is really what we are talking about here- is a very different beast to modern religion.

It is a different beast in part, as Jean Pierre Vernant argues, because we have two related attitudes to the body which the Greeks did not have. The Archaic Greeks did not believe that the body and soul were distinct entities and they did not believe that the body was something separate that one could study. For them the body was the person: this breeds that remarkable Greek attitude (remarkable to anyone brought up in a culture based on the separation of body and soul) that the external beauty of the body reflects moral virtue, that ugliness is in some sense a moral hazard. If the Greeks did not accept a fundamental division between body and soul, neither did they accept a fundamental division between nature and supernature. Zeus and Aphrodite slept with mortals, Ares battled with them on the planes of Troy and a mortal (Paris) was even appointed to arbiter between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera when they were in discord. We should not be surprised to find both these ideas- that the human being was indivisible and that the Gods and humans lay on a continuum influencing what the Greeks understood by a divine body.

The Greek conception of a human body was that it was perishable- every Menelaus turning eventually into Nestor, every Helen into Aethra. Throughout life the body needed revitalising by sleep (Hupnos) and eventually of course the term of the body ran out and the being became subject to the twin brother of Hupnos, Thanatos or Death. The Gods though were not mortal but immortal- in that sense they had 'super' bodies. Aphrodite's beauty was distinct from Helen in that it would not fade. The predicate of immortality was fastened to these 'super' bodies- but also they were exalted because of the nature of their beauty- as the Homeric Hymn comments on the Ionians at the island of Delos 'an unexpected guest would think them immortal and free from old age for he would see grace in all of them'. Notice that immortality comes with extraordinary grace or beauty or indeed strength (hence Apollo can kick away the fortifications of the Argives at Troy like sandcastles on a beech despite their great efforts to construct them). Beauty, strength and grace are all opposites to decay, to old age and ultimately to death- hence they are predicates or permanence: Keats was right in the Ode to the Grecian Urn that one of the great issues in Greece was of the immortality of beauty and that if beauty was immortal it was divine and hence true.

A last thing that Vernant notes that I found very interesting is the way that Greek Gods intervene in the world. Whether it is Odysseus meeting Nausicaa or similarly meeting Telemachus in Ithaca, Athena gives him added lustre. Interestingly that is accompanied by Odysseus getting dressed- and that moves us on to another interesting aspect of the Greek attitude to the body. They saw the aspects of the body whether it be the armour of Achilles or the thunderbolt of Zeus as parts of that body. When Pandora was created, she was created with all the implements of seduction, jewelry, dress and necklace. This adds another metaphor about divine intervention in the world of the human- the Gods putting on (like Prometheus did to Ajax) the hero courage and other attitudes. In a sense, as the outward persona and the inward persona are the same and the body shapes (in our language) the mind, dress becomes a signifier of a change within a person: a God can achieve this but so could a person by dressing themselves.

What Vernant gets here, and I think it is interesting, is a different mentality and way of seeing the world based on a series of very simple assumptions about the world- in which the Greeks and we differ. I want to finish on a caution though- I have relied on his research- and yet there is a reason to be sceptical. It is incredibly difficult to get to a different mentality and there is the potential for evidence to be used and chosen selectively: Vernant seems to use enough evidence to suggest he is not doing this- and even if he has constructed a whole out of a series of shards which denote something else, I think what he has constructed is interesting. It is a different way of viewing the world which leads to several basic assumptions that we all make being discarded, part of the reason to think about history is to realise how strange the past was (History as C.S. Lewis suggested is a traveller wondering through distinct, strange and wonderful territory)- in that sense Vernant succeeds in providing us with a strange and novel vision of the world. The Greek view of the divine body and the human body and its relationship was a fascinating one- and deserves to be understood partly because it is so counter intuitive and strange to those reared in a world that assumes a mind body, nature supernature duality.

Computers and Books

Stacy's post on Huntingdon's Clash of Civilisations is well written and thought out. But Stacy's post exemplifies something more than that- something that I often try to do on this blog. It is to take something that does not exist on the net- a book, a film, whatever- and to record your impressions on the net. That kind of article seems to me to distill something for the reader- gives the reader something that they could not find themselves unless they devoted time to reading an hundred pages of Livy or a passage of Huntingdon. I do not underrate the things that you can find on the internet- the Old Bailey website as I have commented before is a key resource for this blog- but I do think that the best blogs are about something more than a dialogue within the internet. Like Ashok for example, they take texts and arguments from outside the net and explain, refine and consider them within the internet. The net here becomes a mere extension of the Republic of Letters- an extension which allows everyone to write a common place book.

I was provoked to this by reading an article from the Scientific American about how we process text. It is an interesting article which argues that reading on the net involves more distractions and makes cognition and comprehension harder- as I read a page on the internet, I have to adapt to colours and adverts- often moving adverts. I find the argument that that changes the experience of reading and perhaps makes it a less intense and 'thick' experience quite convincing. The means of communication may make concentration harder: and in a sense blogging itself is a medium which does not require as much concentration as reading a book. I would expect you to take a couple of minutes to read this article- and then you might pass over to read something else either on this blog or another. Personally this form helpful to distill my arguments about longer passages- like a book or film- but I would find it hard to read for much further than the 10,000th word of an article (trust me on this having written a PhD I have had to read 80,000 words on a screen, it was painful!) Blogging works online because it allows us not to develop major ideas or scholarly rigour- we have neither space nor time- but it allows a common place book, recording impressions and ideas and hopefully developing a community around each blog which discusses and thinks about similar things.

Fortress Netherlands

This scene is not unfamiliar in Dutch art. It shows soldiers gathering and playing cards, presumably in a garrison town. I found this aspect of Israel's history of the Dutch state one of the most interesting and thought I'd note down some of his arguments. Essentially the Dutch state from the 16th Century onwards was threatened over both its southern and eastern land borders by Spain: their response was to create vast fortresses across the country which protected those borders. Such garrison towns saw large numbers of soldiers gather together with ordinary civilians. As Israel notes this had an important effect on the Dutch army: leading to a focus on discipline. It also stimulated an economy within garrison towns that was dependent on the disposition of the troops- whether prostitution or gambling or legal activities- many townsmen and women relied on the troops for their own sustenance. This is interesting- and it emphasizes something which I think is always worth considering- the influence of large armies on the economies and cultures of the societies that they dominate and protect. I don't want to go beyond Israel's arguments because I am tired and incapable of critical thought- but I do think that his points are interesting enough for us to note- and apply in other situations.

Law Enforcement

Johann Van Banchem was one of the people involved in the lynching of the prominent Dutch statesmen Cornelius and Jan de Witt in 1672, Van Banchem was awarded for his part in the murder with an appointment as Bailiff in the Hague. Eventually though he fell foul of the authorities there for the way that he exerted his authority in the Hague and was himself imprisoned in 1576, eventually dying in prison, after numerous appeals (which had not finished at his death) twenty years later. The story is simple and you might say is a morality tale of a kind- but it is more interesting than that, because the later bit of it, the charges against Van Banchem as a magistrate, illustrate the way that bailiffs had to operate in 17th Century Holland and the way that they had to get close to the criminals that they were supposed to control.

Pieter Wagenaar and Otto Van Meij wrote a fascinating paper on Van Banchem than analyses his methods in exerting his authority in the Hague and the way that he used it. Part of his job involved the supression of what we might loosely term 'sexual morality': he was supposed to stop prostitution, adultery and fornication amongst the population of the Hague. The Republic (in common with other seventeenth century regimes- England in the 1650s is a good example) had made such activities illegal and expected their magistrates to make an effort to suppress them- we should understand that in the context of the Dutch effort to create a civic sober society. Van Banchem was later accused of consorting with prostitutes, allowing brothels (including within his own house) and letting men off with payments of large fines.

For a moment it is worth considering how he got into this situation- and what Wagenaar and Van Meij show is that he got into this position in the course of his normal legal duties. The problem in the seventeenth century was that adultery left no incriminating traces- a man might always deny his offence unless you caught him in the actual act. Without a large investigatory police force or modern forensic techniques, in order to prosecute, Van Banchem and his fellow magistrates had to rely on informers- normally amongst the city population of prostitutes. Van Banchem often sought to put up these prostitutes in houses that he knew- where he could conceal himself and his officers. Sometimes this meant concealing them in his own house and trapping the offenders there. Setting up brothels and consorting with prostitutes was a consequence of lacking the power to investigate crimes. Likewise when Van Banchem took bribes to stop a case proceeding to court- what he was doing was not uncommon in Holland- he was protecting the social structure at the price of the moral law, two sets of values came into conflict and Van Banchem like most magistrates knew that over zealotry was not what was required in cases involving significant gentlemen.

There are aspects of the Van Banchem case which to a Dutch 17th Century eye would look suspicious- he did for instance (after his wife's death) invite a former prostitute into his house as his maid and let her sleep in the room next to his. Other 'offences' we can clearly see were related to the internal politics of the Hague: Van Banchem was accused of imprisoning offenders in his own house- he did that because of a jurisdictional conflict between the Supreme Court of the Hague and the aldermen of the town about where prisoners should be kept. Van Banchem's prosecution also has to be related to his political situation- eventually he upset important factions within the town. The issue is that most of what he did, he had to do in the normal course of his duties- it was impossible to attack the problems that he was expected to attack without using informers, possibly framing suspects, in the context of the Hague using his own house as a prison and a brothel: furthermore his position exposed him to the danger of intimacy with prostitutes and therefore to the temptation to his maid-mistress. What I think is interesting about this is how easy it was to prosecute a magistrate for performing what many others were doing- if Wagenaar and Van Meij are right, what we have here is a fascinating situation which reveals a lot about early modern law enforcement- particularly in the area of sexual morality.

What it reveals is that in order to enforce sexual laws, the magistrate had to find informers from inside the class of those who broke the sexual law. To stop adultery he had to locate and use the women with which men most usually committed adultery- prostitutes. To maintain the social structure, he had to bend the law occasionally. To play the political game aright, he had to be sensitive to competing claims and avoid offense- sometimes this would involve ignoring potential problems and dealing with issues sine jure. We can see all this in the Van Banchem case because we have the records of the court: but I (like Wagenaar and Van Meijj) would suggest this happened a great deal more than it might appear.

When Lear says 'Hark in thy ear, change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief', he may have meant more than our modern glosses might have it. To be a judge in the early modern period meant getting very close to the criminal as you sought to find him, prove his offence and punish him.

Old Bailey Wiki

I have often, as probably you have noticed, used the Old Bailey website as a repositary of interesting information to supply material for posts: I hope that historians are using it in the same way for more proffessional work. Its incredibly heartening therefore to see via Early Modern Notes that a wiki has been started about the proceedings: it will add information on the trials, on who was there, what they were doing at the same time and at other points in their lives and other interesting material. If it succeeds, it could become an indispensible resource. If you ever find someone that you have some information upon in the Old Bailey online records, I suggest you go across and add that information to the Wiki, so that everyone can profit from it and use it in order to further their own research- this seems to me to be a really good idea.

Its also an interesting idea because it illustrates how the web can be used by academics. Beyond devising things that other academics can use- an important branch of the use of the web by academics- I'd personally like to see academics using the web more often. In history for example I think it can provide a useful way of academics engaging with a wider public- historians who wrote blogs could contribute to helping others to understand the subject. A blog like this in a way tries to do a little of that- but there are far better historians out there than me and quite often all I do is rely on the research of others and supply my own thoughts. There are some really good historical blogs of course- but it should be more mainstream within the historical community and other academic disciplines- there are some great blogs out there, but there is space for increase as well. As a new generation, we are told, makes the transition to the web- its important that this medium is used as a way of publically educating people to understand the world around them. Furthermore in the world of the long tail, the web performs a useful function where people who might be interested in a subject, but unable for geographical, employment or other reasons from accessing that subject normally, can access it through the click of a mouse and the movement of a cursor.

The world of academia should not be confined to a discussion within the ivory towers- but should look outwards.

Welfare, Religion and Immigration

One of the major problems of modernity is the difficulties related to concentrations of wealth, immigration and the demands of the poor for welfare. Poor immigrants migrate to richer regions in pursuit of higher wages and thus face universal welfare states with the challenge of how to treat them until they too grow richer. That problem is visible in the United States, Western Europe and even Eastern China: it will probably become a problem in India soon and underlies some of the issues in Israel and Palestine. It is a very interesting and difficult issue for policy makers- and yet it is assumed that it is a new problem, it is not- and I think it is interesting to look at an older treatment of the same issues in the 17th Century Netherlands- not because the alternative is neccessarily better but because it is an alternative way of thinking about the issues that we all face today.

The Netherlands in the 17th Century was an incredibly rich economy- it retained its dominance of the poor trades I noted below- and extended that dominance into luxury goods, like imports from the Americas and Indies. The effect on wages within the Netherlands was dramatic- whereas after 1590 in Western Europe the general trend was for living standards to fall- in the Netherlands wages continued to rise. In 1585 wages in the north were similar to those in the south, by 1609 Willem Usselincx warned that wages were making Dutch industry uncompetitive. Wages in Leiden for example were more than 50% higher than those in Ghent or Bruges for the same jobs. At Antwerp, a high wage city in the south, a bricklayer might earn between 12 to 14 stuivers a day, in Leiden, Delft or Alkmaar such a labourer earned 22 to 24 stuivers a day. The Southern Netherlands had higher wages than Germany, France or England at this point- and despite higher taxes and rentals, it is true to argue that the Northern Netherlands was in general wealthier than the south or any other area within Europe.

What this caused was massive immigration to the north across the century. Recalling that most cities in the early modern period saw no natural increases and increased generally due to immigration, the figures for increases in Dutch cities are incredible across the period we are discussing. Amsterdam's population went from 30,000 in 1570 to 140,000 in 1647- the space of a lifetime. Leiden's population quadrupled in the same period. The Hague's population went from 5,000 to 18,000 people. Haarlem, Rotterdam and Middleburg's population tripled. Enkhuizen, Doordrecht and Hoorn doubled in size. It is quite incredible to think in that case of the repeated plagues that destroyed the Dutch urban population in this time- in 1602 it is estimated that 15% of the population of Amsterdam died whilst epidemics afflicted Leiden about once every ten years. Main sources of immigrants included of course the rural Netherlands, but also the southern Netherlands, Lutheran Germany and England. Within the Republic you ended up with two economies though- one based on the maritime West which thrived and the other on the rural East which declined relatively in the early 17th Century.

We have therefore wage disparity and we have massive immigration- the problem that the Dutch government faced from this was a pretty interesting one and its a familiar one, how do you create out of the immigrants that come in a citizen body. The Dutch had at least one answer that ressembles thinking at the moment: they generally based their distribution on historical lists- stopping payments from going to new immigrants. New Immigrants could not expect any money- they were expected to find jobs as they arrived. One thing that the Dutch had which modern societies do not neccessarily have was that the pull to the Netherlands was in part an ideological pull- towards a republican Calvinism that attracted migrants from the southern Netherlands and the rest of the Protestant Northern European landmass. But what they also used was welfare. Welfare in the Netherlands was, as Sir William Temple argued, far in advance of anything else seen in Europe. One English observer compared the Dutch mental hospitals to the houses of noblemen in England, Cosimo de Medici, son of the Duke of Tuscany, was astounded, reporting on the cleanliness and good order in which inmates were kept, Sir Dudley Carleton compared the Dutch system to that of a well run house. In a sense there was a simple economic rationale behind this- in a system that had an excess of employment and sucked up immigrants like a hoover, orphans could be put to use spinning twine, the poor could be turned into prosperous workers. Definitely that was part of the ideology of these programs- the deserving poor received money to return to work.

There is something else going on here though of interest and that is that welfare was tied within the Netherlands to identity. Firstly it was a privilege granted to religious establishments to cater for their own people- Jews, Lutherans, Calvinists and others had extensive facilities and lists of the deserving poor: significantly those like the Catholics perceived as dangers to the state were not included within this social compact. Secondly these programs were seen as a way to strengthen civic identity, in Middleberg in 1602 orphans were clothed in uniforms with the emblem of the city on their right sleeve. In Haarlem likewise uniforms denoted the status of being poor- but also the pride of the city in caring for its own. Regents, leading town officials, took an important interest in all the functionings of the Dutch welfare system- at Goes for example three regents presided over the town hospital. Civic identity here maintained something as important- an ideal of the Netherlands as a godly society- as Israel says welfare measures were tied as well to laws penalising drunkenness, licentiousness and rowdiness. These laws were the other side of the coin of sustaining a virtuous citizendry.

We should understand the aspirations of the governors of the Netherlands as being to create a citizen- as well as a state. The godly citizen, soberly going about his business, was a political creation- a political creation to both inculcate reason within the general population and to stimulate economic growth but also to fortify the polity. It is not advisable to draw lines between centuries- but in a sense I think we can see the Netherlands facing a real modern problem- that of immigration and republicanism, of geographical wage inequality. Whether the mixture of religion and welfare that they crafted to meet the problem was right is another matter- but it is interesting to see that it was in the Netherlands, possibly the most dynamic, cosmopolitan and tolerant society of 17th Century Europe, that you see the development of this type of welfare state- flowing out of civic and religious pride and ultimately towards the ends of the Republic itself. In a sense, the institutions of welfare in the Netherlands demonstrated that the country was, in Machiavelli's words, a republic designed for increase.

Intolerable Cruelty

The intolerable cruelty of the Coen Brother's film is on the surface easy to believe in: it is the intolerable cruelty of hypocrisy. The film is about what we might call the business of divorce: George Clooney sits on one side of that business as a lawyer who is the cleverest practitioner of the hostile break up, Catherine Zeta Jones sits on the other side as a woman committed to getting ahead in the world through her sex appeal and her callous willingness to leave husbands as soon as she can reap a reward from them. The two of them fence deliciously through the film- but over the film hovers this reality, that no-one believes what they say and furthermore no-one's actions conform to their statements. The assumption is that if you say I love you- you mean I'm going to divorce you in three months and take you for all the money I can get. In some sense Zeta Jones and her coterie define marriage as a very expensive form of prostitution- where divorce is the payoff for three months of a young woman having sex with an older man. In a sense the film is about whether that understanding of marriage is true or not- or whether it is true in every case as it is evidently (in the world of the film and perhaps outside) true in some cases. The problem is whether the film ever convincingly addresses or answers that question- I, as this review will show, am not sure that it does.

The counter argument to the cynical case against marriage is made by Clooney and Zeta Jones's relationship. They fall in love and ultimately, with some moments of tension, they marry and genuinely seem to disavow the option of divorce. That means something but the problem is that the meaning of that statement does not come with as much zest as does the cynical attack on marriage. The latter is made wittily through humour- a point impressed by the Coen brothers' contempt for their characters and its a point that everyone can enjoy. Clooney and Zeta Jones are at their most conventional when they make the conventional argument- that marriage is a commitment which requires you to stop identifying your selfish interests and start identifying your interests as a couple, as a unit- and thus they are at their most uninteresting. They look into each other's eyes, they embrace, they even profess earnestness. The problem with the couple is that they lose their sense of humour when they fall in love- contrast that to the great age of Hollywood comedies that the Coens wish us to remember and the problem is that whereas Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell could do love with humour, the Coens can't.

Ultimately the failure of the film is the fact that the bad guys are so much more charismatic than the good guys. Catherine Zeta Jones establishes her image as the sleek sexy charmer of the first two thirds of the film, George Clooney as the smooth manipulator of men and morals, both can't quite convey the enjoyment of being in love. Both of them feel existential doubts- but they relish their evil behaviour so much that their existential doubts don't really make sense. I think in part the failure here is that the Coens make love too prim or proper- too filled with vows of eternal sanctity- too legal ultimately- and less filled with the laughter and silliness that the emotion is actually about. Clooney and Zeta Jones aren't allowed to enjoy their romance- just like most couples on film are not allowed to enjoy their romances- swooning is in and smiles are out. That failure is an interesting one because it points in some sense to a wider failure in the world of cinema- a failure that I don't think the Coens alone are guilty of- which is that it is incredibly difficult to portray the happy ending where the girl and the guy (or whatever other combination of sexes you fancy) end up walking off into the sunset hand in hand. Making that interesting is not easy- and when your film rides on the contrast between that and biting, sarcastic, cynical, witty opposition to love you have a problem if you are making the romantic case.

This might seem a harsh criticism. The majority of the film does not concern the case for love- but concerns an ironic depreciation of that case. In a sense you could even argue that the ending is itself ironic- but I see no particular reason from what I saw on screen to make that point. Rather what I think we have here is a film that could make one point- that the marriage market in Los Angeles is amusingly cynical and yet profoundly stupid- and then tries to make another point about love vs commercialised and prostituted marriage and fails to make either because of a clumsy ending. I enjoyed the jokes, I found Clooney convincing and amusing and the same goes for Zeta Jones but the whole film failed. The whole film failed because the ending failed- because in the end the Coens couldn't make the film dark enough so that the ending would match the beggining, and couldn't get to the heart of romantic comedy where love is amusing. Instead what we have got is a bit of a mess- with the repartee and wit of the first three quarters and then the instant end cute. This is a four paragraph way of me saying that this film- despite its good performances and nice contrivances- doesn't make sense and for a film made by such film makers, with such intelligence, that for me is a problem.

The Role of the Bulk Trades in the History of the Netherlands

By 1477, 45% of the population of Holland lived in towns- that population was largely within the maritime towns. The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other towns expanded greatly in this era. Their expansion derived mainly from the bulk trades. Amsterdam largely for example traded with Danzig, Konigsberg and Riga. The Herring fisheries similarly expanded throughout the 16th Century- in 1470 there were around 250 herring busses manned by 3000 men, by 1560 there were 500 busses manned by 7000 men. By 1560 there were 1800 ships in Holland with 500 based in Amsterdam- that figure is far larger than any other European fleet- in Venice there were for example only 300 ships at the height of her mercentile power in 1450. It is estimated that 1000 Dutch vessels- some sailing twice- going into the Baltic every year whereas only about 300 German ships went the same way.

These trades influenced the structure of Dutch urban society. Obviously it led to the large populations of the Dutch cities and their survival but its consequences went far further and shaped Dutch history in the 16th Century. Firsty there were important innovations in shipping- leading up to the design of the Hoorn fluit, a large trading ship, in 1590. Dutch shipbuilders designed ships which could take huge amounts of goods, carrying them with small crews over long distances. More importantly though the type of trade influenced the type of society that developed in its wake. There were almost no important Dutch merchants before 1585 and ownership of the ships was diversified over a huge number of men. Consequenctly affluent brewers, millers, grain and timber buyers and farmers might own a section of each ship. Ships were owned sometimes by over 64 people and the profits of voyages were spread over that large amount of owners. This diversification included a diversification across the maritime regions- it was not true that one town or two as in the south dominated trade- rather many towns developed at about the same rate. Hence though the urban population in the northern Netherlands was high, very few of its cities had large populations- only Amsterdam and Utrecht had a population above 20000 in 1560 and no city had a population above 30000 at that date. Compare that to the south which specialised in luxury trades and where Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Mechelen and Lille all had populations over 30,000.

This diversification is important because it led to the success of the Northern Netherlands in resisting Spanish conquest. Partly this was because there were so many sailers about- to refresh the resources of the sea beggars for example in the 1570s who opposed Spanish rule. Partly also such a large diversification of wealth meant that the ruin of one or two cities could not devastate the entire economy of Holland. Likewise such a development argued against the dominance of the Netherlands or of Holland by one city- rather it led to the development of a regionalised politics in which Holland as the largest maritime province dominated. But as opposed to Parisian France or London dominated England, the Netherlands was a much more regionalised economy and therefore its politics too were much more regional. That had vast consequences for the type of regime that emerged after the revolt and also for the type of revolt that took place: the Spanish found the revolt hard to crush because of the difficulty of subduing its centre.

William the Silent

William the Silent's leadership of the Dutch Revolution was crucial to that revolution and thus to the course of European and World history. What is more interesting though than a simple paean to the role of William is that we obtain some understanding of what his function as a leader was within that revolution. My argument, based on Professor Israel's work, is that the William of the Dutch revolution was less of a leader as we might conventionally understand it, than as a symbol and financier. He was driven by as well as driving the revolution that he created- and in certain significant ways that revolution was not what the Prince of Orange intended it to be. This is true right from the beggining- when William himself joined the revolution, to preserve his own position as the representative of the anti-Habsburg forces in the low countries through to the end when he sponsored the involvement of the Duke of Anjou in 1583 despite the Duke's unpopularity within the low countries. Strategically William's interests and the interests of his followers were different- and the interesting thing about Israel's account of the revolution is that because of the unique circumstances of the Dutch revolt, that led to William actually losing out on his interests and being forced to accept those of his followers.

This is perhaps most evident with respect to the direction of the revolution. The Revolution essentially faced two alternative paths: one was to rely on its popular centre in the north of the country and become a revolution dominated from Holland by Calvinist city elites and mobs, the other was to attempt to span the whole of the low countries and rely on the nobility. William's own interest inclined him to the latter: he had important estates in the southern Netherlands and seems not to have been too inclined to adopting a reformation policy. Toleration for Catholics was essential if you were to have a rebellion spanning the Netherlands. William's policy failed though on two important grounds- the first was that it was difficult to maintain a revolution in the south which had a different character to the revolution in the north: the mobs in northern cities that degraded Catholic churches and clergymen were not happy to see those same churches and clergyment protected in the south- even where as in Ghent there were Protestant populations. Likewise whilst to a radical Protestant, the Habsburg crown was associated with the barbaric atrocities of anti-Protestant persecution, to a nobleman the crown was associated with the pyramid of status that protected both property and ultimately society. William ultimately forced to choose- was always going to choose the successful northern rebellion over the weaker southern rebellion- but we should never forget that he wished for a compromise that would retain the vigour of the Protestant radical military strength, whilst maintaining a traditional form of society.

What is interesting about this is that we might think that this was down to William's failings as a leader- could he not have found a formula to unite these factions and led them to victory- but the evidence of the history of Holland suggests otherwise. For William was not alone in attempting to lead the Dutch rebellion and finding that he was led as much as the leader. In 1585, after the Prince of Orange was assacinated, the States concluded a treaty (the Treaty of Nonsuch) with Elizabeth of England wherein Elizabeth nominated a commander, the Earl of Leicester, to come to Holland as Governor General and command both the English forces sent in aid to the Netherlands and the Dutch forces that resisted the Spanish. Leicester found himself in a similar quandary to William- in that he too found himself up against the overmighty province of Holland and was forced, despite his efforts, to temporise with the provincial authorities and adopt in part their strategy. Leicester also attempted to ally with forces in Dutch society that were anti-Holland (in his case the smaller northern provinces) yet thanks to a variety of circumstances he failed and departed in 1587 (and died in 1588).

Leicester and William's cases might seem pretty mundane- here essentially were two leaders who learnt that in a revolution you have to pay political attention to your followers. But I think that the point is greater than that- it reminds us that the reason that early modern noblemen often rebelled against Kings was to have an effect on the rebellion that they were then leading. The point about a rebellion is that its aims are negotiated by the participants and depend on their political strength- and particularly the strength they bring to it- and sometimes not so much on their title or position within it. It is worth remembering this when thinking about rebellion in general because it is not always true that those who lead a rebellion actually control it: the case of the Dutch revolt proves that the future of a revolution can turn out to be very different from that which the leaders envisaged.

The Role of the Inquisition in the Low Countries

A couple of years ago, on the Radio 4 Program, In our Time, Alexander Murray (Emeritus Fellow in History at University College, Oxford) suggested that the Spanish inquisition was part of an agenda of state formation in Spain in the early modern period. Spain a country created in the late 15th Century imposed ideological conformity and administrative unity through the instrument of the inquisition. Murray's theory is interesting and provoking- reading Jonathan Israel's account of the Early Modern Netherlands it becomes even more interesting- because whether that is what we think that the Spanish Inquisition was doing, I think we can argue based on Israel's book that that is precisely what the Low Countries inquisition was doing, and that the response to that inquisition in the Netherlands was a response both to the clerical and to the centralising agenda of the inquisition.

The transition from a medieval to a modern state might be described as the transition from a state wherein there were multiple focii of power- around several notable families- to a unitary state. One thinks for example of the Percies or the Nevilles in the North of England who were capable in the 15th Century of functioning pretty independently. This is a broadbrush approach- and there are exceptions- but stick with it for a moment. Because wherever it was not true, it was definitely true in the Netherlands that the crown governed through notable landed families in the 15th and early 16th Centuries. Phillip II for example relied upon William the Silent as Stadtholder of numerous provinces in the north. Accross the 16th Century inside the Netherlands we see the crown (at this point the Hapsburg crown) taking an interest in the development of a professional administrative class- Antoine Perrerot de Granvelle and Viglius van Aytta are notable examples of these men- who were educated by the humanists and formed an alternative cadre for appointment.

The crown though had to see inside each nobleman's provinces. We know that in the 1550s and 1560s one of the focii for conflict between the centre and the periphery in the Netherlands was religion. Several noblemen permitted religious heresy to take place on their own lands. Phillippe de Montmorency, Count of Horn, for example within the county of Horn allowed Protestants to proslytise- as did the noble leaders in communities in Gederland such as Culemborg, Broculo-Lichtenvoorde and Batenberg. Developing the powers of the inquisition would not merely enforce religious conformity but undermine the power of the nobility to interfere in their own regions and make their own choices about religion. Consequently when a more efficient structure of bishoprics was imposed- with Granvelle himself going to one bishopric- and when the inquisition was strengthened, the nobility protested. At 's-Hertogenbosch for example the local clergy (the Abbots of Meierij) and the local nobility (the States of Brabant) objected to the installation of Bishop Sonnius. But more was to follow: in 1565 Hendrik van Brederode and Floris of Culemborg set up the league of compromise which was a movement of crypto-Protestant and Protestant noblemen. In April 1566 they were able to present a petition to the regent of the Netherlands- Margerate of Parma- with a petition signed by 200 noblemen advocating the dismantlement of the inquisition.

On the one hand we should see that petition and the events I have discussed here as religious events- a Protestant faction responding to a Catholic crackdown. But also there is another part of the story- whether in the Holy Roman Empire (with Frederick the Wise), in England, Scotland, France or Spain, the reformation and counter reformation represented efforts by rulers to centralise their realms. The crown through these movements was claiming great powers, powers to inspect and verify the faith of its servants at great distances. The reaction to those claims wherever it came from was religious- but it also concerned the extent of those powers. Many within the nobility did not see that centralisation as a particularly 'good' thing- for them it represented a diminishing of their sphere of power and could be a Trojan horse for other royal claims. It is worth remembering that when the Dutch nobility objected to Phillip's inquisition what they were doing was objecting to a counter-reformation attack on Protestantism- but they were also seeking to defend their own privileges and powers against royal aggrandisment.

The dual face of the reformation cannot be ignored: we have to pay attention both to the fact that the reformation was a religious movement and that it turned confessionalisation into royal policy- the first had consequences but so did the latter and out of the fires of the reformation, the modern conception of the state evolved. Whereas where as with Phillip in the Netherlands or the Elizabeth in England, that process of state formation based on the creation of religious uniformity worked- in the sense that resistance was dealt with with ease- in the Low Countries, the process failed and consequently the Northern Netherlands split away forming the United Provinces. State formation- along with religious enthusiasm- is at the heart of the story of the Low Countries in the 16th Century.

Money and Civic Instability

There are certain types of crises that you can only have with money. One of the interesting things about Roman history is that soon after the Gallic invasion we have one of these crises. Livy attributes the crisis to the ambition of the centurion Marcus Manlius. The crisis concerned a centurion who was prosecuted for debt, 'as he was led off to prison Manlius saw him, hurried up in mid forum with a party of his supporters and held forth about the arrogance of the senators, the cruelty of the moneylenders, the miseries of the people, the merits and misfortune of the man.' (VI 14) Manlius does something here which I consider interesting- he contrasts the visible misfortunes of the people and bravery of the man against the invisible power of money. The injustice of the way that money operates- seemingly without any relation to the merit or demerit of the person involved- is for Manlius a political driver.

It is that operation that Manlius is focussed upon- how can someone who was a brave soldier end up in debt. In a sense the invisibility and incomprehensibility of the situation is something that creates a political opportunity. Money also creates inequality- further inequality because it allows people to store resources in a way that is not possible in a barter economy in perishable goods. You have a medium for the storage of wealth- but also a medium for the storage of debt because it is easier to create a concept of interest as well as to ennumerate a universal concept of what someone owes. What Manlius does is to create a political opportunity out of the latter issue. He uses the first development though to imply that the whole situation is the responsibility of a senatorial conspiracy: 'he declared amongst other things that the patricians were concealing treasure hoards of gallic gold and were no longer content with possessing State lands unless they could also appropriate State money; if the facts were made public the people could be freed from debt'.

Manlius's explanation for Rome's situation is clever but inaccurate- there are many reasons why debt would grow after a war, and increasing monetisation would definitely create increased inequality- but this is an interesting episode in Roman history. It is interesting because it reflects something about the way that money affects politics: it allows for further developments in the quantification of debt, allows for increased inequality and also it moves the value society puts on something from the intrinsic value of an item. Instead of a rabbit being worth seven candlesticks, both rabbits and candlesticks are translated into a conventional measure of value. Money ultimately is a civic abstraction. These developments- debt, inequality and abstraction all create a new type of politics- something I think we see in Livy's account of Manlius's debtor's revolt. Simply put, the Manlian moment could not have occured without a monetary moment preceding it.

The Death of Christopher Marlowe: Charles Nicholl's The Reckoning

Christopher Marlowe's death in 1593 is one of the most famous literary whodunnits in English history. Marlowe, Shakespeare's peer, had arguably acheived as much as Shakespeare until that date- his plays, Edward II, Tamberlaine, the Jew of Malta and Dr Faustus are examples taught in English classes and seminars today of classic verse and his poetry too lives on. Marlowe however was killed at the age of 29, in a room in Deptford, by a man called Ingram Frizier. The Coroner's court which met soon afterwards decided that what had happened was that four men, Marlowe, Frizier, Robert Pooley and Nicholas Skiers had met in Deptford, in the house of a Mrs Bull (herself affiliated to the court, and related to William Cecil), and spent around eight hours talking. Later in the evening they had had an argument over the bill for the drink and food that they had consumed, Marlowe had stolen Frizier's knife and attacked Frizier with it, Frizier responded and their was a fight, during which Marlowe was stabbed through the eye and killed. Frizier the assailant was set free on the grounds that he had committed self defence- and that Pooley and Skiers backed up his story.

The coroner's inquest record was discovered in the 1920s- and ever since there have been arguments about whether the record tells the truth or not. I have to confess here to being ignorant of many of the arguments- but one recent attempt to reconstruct the truth of what might have happened comes from Charles Nicholl, in a study published by the University of Chicago Press. Nicholl argues that you can only understand the death of Marlowe if you understand the background of the participants. He establishes that the three men in the room apart from Marlowe all had shady pasts. Frizier was an extortioner. Skiers worked both for the Earl of Essex as an agent and for Frizier as muscle. Pooley was a station chief for William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and had worked for Sir Francis Walsingham in intelligence for years. Marlowe himself was almost certainly an agent too- he was allowed to take a degree in Cambridge despite the worries of the dons about his orthodoxy because of a special warrant from the Privy Council and had been involved in various nefarious activities in the Netherlands as well as being rumoured to have been interested in the succession to Elizabeth.

Nicholl's argument is that what happened in 1593 was that Frizier and Skiers and Pooley were trying to negotiate with Marlowe. Marlowe himself was being questioned by the Privy Council at the time about accusations of atheism- that Nicholl ties to factional struggles at court between the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh. What may well have happened is that when the negotiation to get Marlowe to confess to atheism and implicate Raleigh failed, these lowly agents panicked and killed the poet spy. Based on what Nicholl writes it is a plausible reconstruction- the idea that this was a panicked killing which the participants then agreed to keep quiet makes sense. Panic is always a good historical explanation- better than any conspiracy at least. Whether Nicholl's precise constellation of facts is right I cannot be sure- there are too many 'musts' and 'shoulds' in his account, too many suppositions for us to express confidence in it as the total and unvarnished truth. Nicholl is addicted to supposing what happened in the gaps between the evidence- and whilst his explanation has the ring of truth to it, it depends on a chain of supposition and presumption. Marlowe's death ultimately may be an unresolved mystery.

Having said all of that, Nicholl's work is still worthwhile and what he has accumulated is interesting. It is interesting less because it reveals what actually happened on that dark day in Deptford, than because it reveals the world in which Marlowe passed. The world that Nicholl reveals is a world where criminality, spying and treachery are phases of a life- rather than divisions between different occupations. A character like Nicholas Skiers was a criminal (who manipulated people into contracts that they could not fulfill and who stuck closely to the letter of the law if not its spirit), a traitor (who consorted with Catholics and may well have had Catholic sympathies) and a spy. Robert Pooley, one of the men in the room, worked for Sir Francis Walsingham's secret service for years- and yet Walsingham never quite worked out which side Pooley was on and which side he worked for. Pooley was arrested for holding seditious literature for example, as well as procuring the arrests of others.

Marlowe himself fits into this world neatly. He was arrested for affray, for counterfeiting coins, was on the outside of circles around noblemen suspected of treachery and may have been stoking the flames there. Many of his friends were involved in the same kinds of activities- Thomas Watson for example another poet and playwright (though all his plays are now unfortunately lost) was a confidence trickster with a mean streak. Nicholl brings to life this world in fascinating detail- in a sense therefore it does not matter what happened in Deptford- because by analysing it we discover a lot more about Elizabethan life, politics and poetry.

Happy New Year

Apologies for the silence- I have a very irritating cold at the moment and am not feeling quite myself. But Happy New Year to all and sundry who visit this blog or who just have come through today through chance- I hope you all have a good 2009, despite the current economic gloom, and had a good New Year.

The Dutch Reformation 1520-50

Dutch Protestantism had massive consequences for European history: it fuelled the eventual Dutch revolt, had an important effect in the English seventeenth century particularly the civil war and the Revolution of 1688, and provided a check on French and Spanish ambitions in Germany and the wider world. Understanding its peculiar nature therefore is a vital part of understanding the events that formed the modern world- the English Civil War, the Thirty Years War and the culture of Early Modern Europe. Dutch Protestantism provided an intellectual environment for the philosophy of Spinoza, the jurisprudence of Grotius and the talents of painters like Van Eyck all took their form within a world shaped by Dutch Protestantism.

So what shaped Dutch Protestantism? According to Professor Israel there are two basic phenomena that we need to take account of if we are to understand what was unique about Dutch Protestantism. The first was that the Dutch Church was weak and that Dutch humanism was strong. The Dutch church was large but its presence within society was declining and it was unpopular. Furthermore it did not have appropriate leadership- the Netherlands was ecclesiastically divided between different bishoprics, some in France and in Germany. Into this clerical vacuum came the new techniques of humanism. The subject of humanism and what it meant in the early modern period is incredibly complex but lets assume for the sake of this discussion, that what it meant was a new attitude to texts. A humanist such as Erasmus taught that texts were open to those who might use them with the appropriate scholarly apparatus- consequently what he did for example was produce a Dutch translation of the Bible. Theologically they were committed to reform within the Church- often reform that might look like the reforms that Protestants too favoured, rationalisation we might call it- reforms which swept away clerical privileges and abuses and attempted to focus the Church around its mission- the gospel of Christ.

Such bald summaries will have to suffice to explain the nature of the landscape in the Netherlands- but I hope that gives you the impression that the Netherlands was ripe for the Lutheran movement after 1520 to spread. The last factor which governed how that movement spread was the persecution adopted as policy by the Hapsburg rulers of the Netherlands. Charles V made repeated efforts to bring in to the region the inquisition- fortifying it even after he had brought it in. The effect of this was to force the reformation under ground. Significantly it created a large group of people who temporised- who remained within the Catholic Church but held Protestant opinions. The martyrs who died for the faith were more often Anabaptists than Lutherans- another fact which influenced the progress of the reformation.

What this did was create in the Netherlands, according to Professor Israel, a very different reformation to the reformations that happened elsewhere in Europe. Whereas in Britain for example the reformation received its initial impetus from the crown and a reformed Church, in the Netherlands there was no institutional support for the reformation. Consequently Israel argues that the Dutch Reformation developed in an unstructured way- its heroes were people who in most of Europe were derided. It should also be noted that it developed into a movement of internal reformation- influential theorists like David Joris argued for a reformation proceeding through the spirit. Anabaptism remained stronger in the Netherlands than elsewhere in Europe- in some provinces up to 25% of congregations did not believe in child baptism. It should also be noted that whereas in the UK- London formed the centre of the reformation, in Holland it was marginal regions like East Frisia where Hapsburg persecution did not reach or amongst exiles in Germany that influential developments like the arrival of Calvinism took place.

The Dutch Reformation was much more fluid and anarchic precisely because it was an underground reformation- it was much less institutional and much more internal for the same reason. It came up from below- partly because of the triumph of humanism and weakness of the Church and partly because of the persecuting zeal of the Hapsburg Emperor. The story of Dutch Protestantism was different to that of English Protestantism because in England the new religion was chained to Parliament and the King, in the Netherlands the new religion was the leading antagonist of the Hapsburgs and only became fettered to the state after seizing a position amongst the people. In that sense, according to Professor Israel, Holland saw a different rhythm either from England or Scotland or Germany.

Le Mepris or Marxist Methods for living in a Capitalist World

She discovers she no longer loves Ulysses because of his weakness.

I don't think its safe to review a film on a first viewing- or at least to review a film like this on a first viewing. But Le Mepris or Contempt struck me with such force that I thought I must leave some testament- some record to what it inspired in me at first viewing. It was not merely the beauty of the young Bardot, nor the impassive resistance and majesty of Fritz Lang but something more important than that. Its the breakdown of the relationship at the centre of the film that affected me: that relationship breaks down in a wonderful sequence that lasts over half an hour, which is reminiscent in its triviality and its profundity, of every meaningless argument that ever destroyed a relationship and devastated lives. What Goddard makes is an argument both about the nature of film- of which more later- but also about the nature of life and love. In this sense the view of the film that sees it as a letter from Goddard to his estranged wife Anna Karina makes more and more sense- for what would such a letter be composed of but thoughts about love and about film. And as such there is something private about Le Mepris, something that will never be decoded, something that we will strive to find in this or any review and fail to.

So what is Le Mepris about. An imperious American producer, Prokosch, has hired Lang- the great director- and wants to hire a young screenwriter to rewrite Lang's over intellectual script. Lang has aspirations to make a film about Homer's Odyssey, Prokosch wants more naked mermaids unerotically but nakedly cavorting in the sea (after one such sequence the Producer giggles and squirms in his chair). The writer, Paul, is married to a beautiful ex-typist- Bardot's character, Camille- whom Prokosch takes an immediate shine to. Prokosch invites the two of them back to his mansion: he then invites Camille to take his car with him, he then propositions her on the way to his house and when Paul finally turns up, having lost the way, an hour later Camille frigidly turns from him. The rest of the film surrounds his inability to see what she has been through- and her inability to communicate that to him- this precipitates the final calamity in their marriage. Surrounding it though is the bleak story of the film- in which Prokosch's bizarre speculations about what the Homeric story really means, and his pocket book quotation philosophy, triumphs over Lang's subtlety because he has the wallet. Paul resists the fall. For Lang it is merely a reminder that to live is to suffer.

The language in which this story is expressed is interesting- it is all about ownership. Camille's arguments with Paul are about the fact that she cannot be owned- she can be loved, adored even and can love and adore but she cannot be owned. Her decisions cannot be taken for her. On another plane the same issue appears with the film, Homer's story cannot be owned by an American media mogul no matter how rich. Even the Gods in Odysseus fail to manipulate the wanderer strictly to the paths they have chosen- and what Goddard leaves us in no doubt with is the perception that all claims of ownership ultimately do not provide the kinds of release that they offer. Prokosch may think he is a modern Zeus, actually he is a comic Malvolio with a magnum of champagne. But we can go further and deeper into this: the next thing that Goddard demonstrates is that people do not wish to be or like to be owned. Camille is the vehicle for this perception- as soon as she perceives that her husband is using her as a commodity, her fury becomes an emblem within the film. Furthermore one knows that even if she were to use Prokosch, she would despise him.

If the impossibility of owning another human being is one side of Goddard's coin, then the other side is how to live in a society where demands are constantly made upon one to give up oneself. Three approaches manifest themselves here within the confines of the film- and they surround the three main male characters. Prokosch's approach is to seize control of the universe- but as Goddard shows when you try and do that, the universe has a habit of rebounding on you, causing tragedy not merely to the slave but to the master. The second approach is Paul's and that is a wilful blindness to what is happening to you- an acceptance of the ownership imposed by society because you are too stupid to recognise that your producer covets your pretty wife and too foolish to see how your integrity is being compromised. The third approach is that of Lang: to search for something else- in this case art- and use the society you live in to that end. Not to compromise unless you are forced, and when you are forced give in with a weary nod to that old truth- that in living there is suffering. Lang's position is not merely a directorial nod to the kind of films that Goddard saw as dying, but also within the film it is a nod to the kind of life that wanted people to inhabit: when it comes to the world resigned cynicism, when it comes to art interest and enthusiasm.

Ultimately what Goddard's film is about, is what Lang says that the Odyssey is about, the theme of fate and how to live one's life in a world governed by other forces. For Lang, the hero of the Odyssey represents the human desire to achieve an objective- whether it be art or Ithaca in a world governed by tyrants- Goddard's point in a sense is that Lang represents in this case, an Odysseyan view of life. Whereas Paul would have abandoned the quest to return to Ithaca on Circe's island, and Prokosch sought to become a God himself, Lang keeps on, monocle in place, making the film that he wants to make because he seeks not to enslave, but to produce something of worth. In that sense the artist, the Greek hero and the proletarian worker have become one- in that sense only can we escape, in Goddard's view, from contempt.

Holland: the Geographical Foundations of the Netherlands

When I was a kid, I used to make the mistake of calling the Netherlands, Holland. Its a mistake often made- though of course Holland is the largest province within the Netherlands. Its a mistake though, now I learn as (belatedly) I read Jonathan Israel's history of the Dutch Republic, that is excusable- not because the mistake is any less greivous but because historically Holland was the principle duchy which drove the unification of the Netherlands. What is more interesting when analysing the formation of the Netherlands is a simple question- why did the low countries split (effectively) in half in the sixteenth century. Why was it that Holland and its surrounding provinces went one way, whereas Flanders, Brabant and the south turned into what is now modern Belgium?

Israel's answer to this question is interesting- and it rests upon two principle observations about the geographical foundations of medieval politics- the first local, the second multinational. The first observation has to do with the local interior geography of the low countries. Faced with a map of the low countries, the natural boundary constituted by the Waal and Maas becomes instantly visible. This boundary of rivers was the boundary north of which the Flemish and Brabantian forces did not cross. In general both Flanders and Brabant were more concerned about maintaining thier southern border against France than about the natural frontier to the north- thus their influence permeated Artois to the south in a way that it never penetrated Utrecht to the north. With the exception of Zeeland- the Waal Maas line remained the line beyond which the state of Holland could expect to exert little influence and furthermore that they could expect little threat from. This was supported by the fact that according to Israel trade within the Netherlands ran East-West- up and down rivers towards the coast- rather than north south, along the coast, suggests an adequate reason why the southern states never projected their power northward, allowing Holland to develop its primacy in the Northern Netherlands. (It is important to note that even though Holland was conquered by the Burgundians and inherited by the Habsburgs- both kept the older geographical boundaries within the Netherlands as administrative units.)

The second geographical phenomenon that explains the rise of Holland within the north Netherlands is the great rise in irrigation in the late Middle Ages. As Professor Israel documents, the Dutch reclaimed vast tracts of land from the water as early as these centuries- and by doing so they extended the limits of their own land. This created new bases of power- favouring the maritime coastal states whose land increased- and also whose opportunities for trade increased. It is worth thinking at this point about the major challenge to Holland in the Northern Netherlands- which came not so much from the south as from the east. It was the Hansa cities of Northern Germany worried about the Baltic trade who attempted to fund opposition to Holland in the Northern Netherlands. And that bears testament to the second geographical process- which is the long range trade of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, whereby Holland found herself a potential entrepot in trade running down the Baltic Sea out into the North Sea and from there down the Rhine or further down the English Channel. That kind of trade helped fortify the Netherlands later on in history- but even in this early period it led to the German city states seeing Holland's primacy over the Northern Netherlands as a potential competitor to be disuaded.

Professor Israel's work is a distillation of the research work of others- how could it not be covering so many centuries and he is not an expert in the medieval period. But I find his insights into the geographical foundations of the Dutch story interesting and persuasive- it may not be that the details of this are precisely right- but that the story of the Netherlands involves two central facts- the East West boundary of the rivers and the importance of trade from the Baltic seems to me to be undeniable.

What's a war?

I do not doubt that people who read in all these books about endless wars with the Volscians will feel surfeited by them, but they will also feel as astonished as I did myself when I examined the historians who were more nearly contemporary with these events, and will ask where the Volscians and Aequi got a sufficient number of soldiers after so many defeats. (VI 12)

War with the Volscians and the Aequi seem to be a constant theme of early Roman history: on the face of it though this seems confusing, war, as we understand it, ruins societies- continuing war for hundreds of years would leave someone exhausted, someone conquered. Here though it seems that hundreds of years of war gave birth to even more wars. Livy himself suggests some reasons for this- he suggests either successive generations of young men were raised to fight Rome and that in previous times the territory inhabited by the two groups was much more fertile than it was in Livy's day. Changing fertility is not unrealistic: Egypt and Mesopotamia used to be incredibly fertile agricultural districts- they are not so now. But I think we can add to Livy's explanations with some suggestions of our own.

Firstly its worth asking the question about who were the Volscians and Aequi. Livy's sources were compiled centuries after the event. It does not seem implausible therefore that what we know of, through Livy, as Volscians and Aequi, were actually collective nouns for invaders in general. There may be a confusion here between several Italian peoples- and what we may see therefore is that these nouns are used generically. Its a thought at least and to some extent Livy agrees noting that it is possible that the new levies were not recruited from 'the same tribes, although it was always the same nation that was at war.' (VI 12)

Secondly there is the nature of warfare. Warfare as we and Livy understand it and as the Romans of Camillus's days understood it are slightly different entities. I wonder whether Livy's sources deceive him into imagining full scale warfare- whereas he should actually be thinking of raiding. We know that Livy himself described the object of the wars that the Volscians and Aequi fought in terms of plunder, I suspect what these 'wars' are is raids for plunder. What we may see here is two things- firstly a bias in Roman reporting- away from reporting failures and particularly from reporting successful raids on cities (and raids on non-Roman sites) and secondly a bias in the reporting to exaggerating the numbers involved. If we think of war bands coming down upon Rome to gain plunder, and sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, with punitive expeditions sent by Rome to fight back, I think we can see a more stable situation in which long term conflict leads neither to destruction nor to absolute victory.

The word 'war' can deceive us. The last thing we should note is that the size of armies and therefore their impact on population levels varies hugely. In the Middle Ages- thousands of men or even at times hundreds encountered each other in major battles: compare that to a First World War army of millions and you can see that whereas it is possible to raise several medieval armies in one country, it would be difficult to raise a second or third first world war size army. The same contrast functions in Livy's case- the wars that he is describing may be wars involving small amounts of people- hundreds, possibly barely a thousand- scarcely numbers that would impact on the ability of the participants being able to fight again. Introduce into that situation the possible importance of plunder and you have a situation in which perpetual warfare is quite possible- indeed probable.

Merry Christmas everyone

To everyone who wonders past this blog Merry Christmas- there should be some posting before then so a Happy New Year. I've had a cold for a while which is why posting has been slow- but tis the season of goodwill- hope you and yours are well and have a good time with lots of presents!

Penny Bloods and Novels

I've been involved for the last couple of weeks in debates with various bloggers about what has happened to civilisation over the last couple of centuries- has it declined? One of the indicies of that has to be what level of interest there is in books. What people read and what they understood about what they read is a perrenial and interesting debate- as is the question of what people read today and what they understand now about what they read. A useful way of considering that though is to consider what happened in the Victorian era- when popular literature exploded. It is very difficult to work out prices in the Victorian era- but at least one extimate I have seen places the pound at that point as worth twenty five to fifty pounds in today's money- maybe even one hundred pounds. A highly paid skilled workman in the period might expect to earn about 80 to 90 shillings (around 4 pounds) a week. Bear those figures in mind for what comes next.

The economics of book buying are interesting in this context- we have established a raw measure of what a person in the upper working class might be able to spend but not the price of books. In truth books were incredibly expensive. Three volume novels (of which there were many) frequently sold for 31 shillings (a pound was 20 shillings)- those in two volumes cost roughly a pound and a single volume novel was much less, retailing at 5 shillings (but these would be aimed at a younger audience). Publishers complained that the British were not a 'book buying people' and first editions numbered in hundreds of copies not the thousands often seen today. Even Middle Class readers would subscribe to a circulating library which would provide them with the newest fiction, rather than attempting to buy volumes themselves.

What changed was the growth of novels in serial form- retailed in journals like Charles Dickens' All the Year Round, these novels would be sold in parts. Almost all of Dickens's novels were originally published as episodic novels- Pickwick Papers came out in 18 separate parts. Dickens was the best selling novelist of the era: but others like Trollope, Thackery, Gaskell, Eliot and Hardy also published their works in serial form. These were much more affordable for the ordinary public. You can see the effect they had- as leading authors lamented the ill educated general public becoming involved in the process of choosing and designating successful literature: Wilkie Collins for example wrote in Household Words (then edited by Dickens) that 'the future of English fiction may rest with an Unknown public, which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad book'.

Of course that public did not only read novelistic fictions- alongside these fictions, a newly educated public (thanks to philanphropic enterprise and a series of education acts from the 1850s onwards) consumed so called penny bloods and penny dreadfuls. The Penny Bloods were melodramatic romances- often highly fantastical stories of derring do and crime. They caused a moral panic- in 1888 an MP raised questions with the Home Secretary about the effect of the bloods upon young boys, noting that two boys waiting their trial in Maidstone Prison for murder had been inspired by tales of Dick Turpin and Sweeney Todd. These 'bloods' also were published alongside parodies of well known authors: Oliver Twiss, Nicholas Nickerby and the Penny Pickwick were all published by Edward Lloyd when Charles Dickens' works came out and Llyod's imitations were in some cases (Pickwick in particular) vastly possible with hundreds of thousands of copies sold, in some cases more copies sold than the originals.

This profusion of literature suggests something to me though which I think is important. It suggests the explosion of a literary market- and went alongside technical innovations in printing (that Louis James for one described as the greatest innovation in printing between the time of Caxton and the 1960s). What happened was that you are beggining by the end of the 19th Century and beggining of the 20th Century to see a much greater book buying public- a public that stretched far lower into the social structure than it ever had before. You cannot undervalue that change in terms of what it did to society: what it did to the way that society operated, we may still be living with some of the consequences, or with what it did to the educational lives of many many people. Its worth remembering that change, when we speak of the decline of civilisation.

Etz Limon

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has consumed lives and energies throughout the Middle East: whatever your opinions of the roots of that conflict, its persistance has been a tragedy running through the politics of both sides for far too long. The Lemon Tree deals with that conflict from the perspective of one Palestinian woman and her friends and an Israeli family. The story is pretty basic. The Israeli Minister of Defence has moved into a new house just beside the West Bank/Israeli border: the house borders on the farm of a middle aged Palestinian widow (Salma) who makes her livelihood from her lemons. Shin Bet believes that the lemon grove might represent a security threat to the minister- a militant concealed in the trees might be able to approach and attack his house. The Minister orders therefore that the grove be cut down- the widow, distressed, consults a lawyer and takes the case to the courts, attempting to override the order. The resulting drama both in the case and for the characters takes over the rest of the film.

There are a number of interesting themes here that are worth mentioning. One is something that I have to admit I barely understand- the attachment of farmers to a particular piece of land and to their crops. Trees are twice referred to as semi-human: once by the minister recalling what his farmer father told him, once by the Salma's friend and co-worker to the court considering the case. Salma is offered compensation, but for her as a flashback establishes, the point is the emotional connection that she has with the land. That connection, the implication goes, is almost what has replaced her fled family and dead husband. Her poverty and loneliness are bearable because she has the trees that her father taught her to pick and prune- those trees sustain a pride based on rural cultivation, a pride and self respect that is purely admirable.

Another theme running through the story is the sexism implicit on both sides of the divide. It is strongly implied that the minister is having an affair with a pretty young receptionist, neglecting his wife. His wife emerges as a central character- able to sympathise with Salma but unable to do anything about it: her concerns are dismissed by her officious husband and her one intervention in the plot seals her own alienation from her husband. The sexism is evident on the other side too- and is much much worse. Salma is oppressed by a regional authoritarian traditional male hierarchy, who refuse to let her see her lawyer (who she slowly falls in love with) and rebukes her for allowing her son to work in America. The under current of oppression is constant and Salma's bravery is possibly in confronting her own side of the divide as much as it is in confronting the lawyers she faces in the court. Her own love story with the lawyer illustrates the limits for a woman in Palestinian society.

Lastly of course there is the occupation itself- which is if you like the texture around which the story develops. The Minister's name, Israel, is not an accident. But in general I found this part of the plot dealt with pretty reasonably. The Minister is portrayed as sensible- if you were told that there was a potential threat to your life by the secret service, you might be willing to cut down some lemon trees. The soldiers are portrayed as even more sympathetic- we see a soldier standing on a look out post, but rather than being a sinister presence, he is a comic one- we get bursts from the audio course he is taking, whilst on boring sentry duty, and he comes across as a nice guy. That's true of the secret service men too- they occasionally seem officious but not brutal. As this is a story about Palestinian dispossession- the Palestinian angle is well covered too, indeed the lawyer who is close to the PLO seems fair and willing to take the case pro bono. Good people occasionally break each other's hearts through a bad situation seems to be the message of this film about the conflict- but it cannot deal with any of the deeper roots, the issues that fill the news broadcasts. It is ultimately too simple a story to say anything much about the politics of the region.

As a film, it acheives what it wants to do. I liked two of the performances in particular. Hiam Abbass is wonderful as Salma- she conveys the pride and self respect she feels brilliantly. She does things with a glance, a look away, that could make her a silent film star- she doesn't need speech to convey her emotions. Rona Lipaz-Michael is stunningly beautiful as the minister's wife (something that renders the affair implausible) but she too does a very good job- conveying her difficult role, her inchoate suspisions and her sympathy both with Israel and Salma, with perfect economy. Occasionally there are false notes- but overall the standard of the film is good- the false notes mainly come in the cloying relationship between Salma and the lawyer. In the final analysis though, this film is a simple story with a couple of interesting messages- mostly about the societies that find themselves in this conflict rather than the conflict- and those messages are delivered in an entertaining way.

Cineastes and students of politics might rebuke the film's simplicity: I'd advise you relax, sit back and enjoy it.

Alexis Soyer- 19th Century Celebrity Chef

In 1841, the Globe observed that

The impressio grows that the man of this age is neither Sir Robert Peel, nor Sir John Russell, [nor] even Ibrahim Pasha, but Alexis Soyer.

The first two should be recognizable to us all- Peel was a great reforming Home Secretary and Prime Minister, Russell too served as Prime Minister, Ibrahim Pasha an Egyptian general- but who was Alexis Soyer? Soyer was an immigrant to Britain, he had worked an apprenticeship in the kitchens of Versailles in the 1820s and 1830s, became cook to the Reform Club in the 1840s and left that to open his own resturant, opposite the Crystal Palace in 1851. Soyer might not be a well known figure today- but he is an interesting figure. For like Jamie Oliver today, Soyer advised the British government on food and also attempted his own public initiatives to improve the health of the nation. What he did though and the contrast to Jamie Oliver's recent enterprises is an interesting one if we are to understand the different remit of the British state today and in the 19th Century.

Oliver today, for those who do not know, is a well known television chef in the UK and has embarked on an endeavour to improve the food of school kids and the population at large in the UK. Hold that thought in your mind. What Soyer did was very different. His two most famous interventions into politics were separated by almost a decade. In the 1840s, Soyer provided food to Irish men and women starving in the famine. His soups were offered in Dublin for free to releive the situation. The second thing that Soyer did came a decade later- he was instrumental alongside Florence Nightingale in providing better food to troops in the Crimea in hospital. Indeed he invented a portable stove that as the 'Soyer' stove was still being used by British troops in the first Gulf War. Soyer was prompted to intervene by the realisation that the troops in the Crimea were being served worse food than prisoners in the UK.

Soyer's endeavours were directed against two of the main problems of the 19th Century state. He attempted to do something that traditionally food did: stop famine and provide recourse to the starving in moments of disaster. From the 19th Century on, such famines have become less common in industrialised societies but we should not forget how important the fear of famine was as a political factor still. The Irish famine was a key part of an Irish story of neglect by the British: it would have been within living memory for some of those who were around in the Irish civil war (1916-22) and definitely within the living memory of their parents. The other aspect of what Soyer did was to attempt to improve the standards of health within the army. The 19th Century saw a growing movement within Britain towards a proffessional army- cemented in part by the consequences of the Crimea and also by the reforms of Gladstone's 1870 government. But we should be careful to understand what Soyer's endeavours were: they were charitable (in Ireland) or directed to a specific patriotic purpose.

Contrast that to Jamie Oliver who wants to improve the diet of every school kid in England- that is a much more extensive project than anything Soyer wished to do. We are extending ourselves to the whole population- and dealing with a problem that might be one of over abundance rather than scarcity. The difference between Soyer and Oliver's charitable impulses is their scope- and that reflects the increasing scope of the state. From the Boer war onwards, the British state became interested in the health of its citizens- we can detect one of the reasons for that in some of Soyer's work. From the 19th Century, the diet and health of your soldiers became of interest to you as a politician or strategic thinker: in the era of mass warfare that meant the diet and health of your young men as a whole cadet rather than just of the young men serving in the army. Soyer's career therefore indicates one of the reasons why his era would change into the era of Oliver- but its important that we see the aspirations of the British state in the 19th Century not as a step to the 20th but in its own right. Soyer's endeavours allow us to define the scope of what was viewed as possible to do in the 19th Century- and a useful way of understanding the evolution of the state in that period.

Camillus's Character

We discussed earlier Camillus the dictator as an archetype of why Livy beleived that Rome needed a dictator. What we also have to realise- again using Camillus as a model- is that Livy believed that offices did not guarentee stability, officers guarenteed stability. Camillus's dictatorship did not harm the Republic because of who Camillus was. Camillus, Livy says, was ready to delegate power- in the war against Antium (closely following the wars that I described in my earlier post) he delegated half his own authority to Publius Valerius, the disposition of a reserve force to Quintus Servilius and a force to protect Rome to Lucius Quinctius as Lucius Horatius was appointed to govern the munitions and Servius Cornelius put in charge of domestic policy (VI 6). The key point here is that Livy argues that Camillus wanted these people to serve as his equals with himself as primus inter pares, relying on his reputation to maintain his ascendency.

Camillus, Livy argues, understood the role of office. He argued that military leadership and service was a 'perpetual opportunity for you to show your mettle and win glory' (VI 7). He clarified his own role as leading commander to his soldiers in a Republican way: 'I have no wish for absolute authority over you' he told them (VI 7). But particularly interesting is what he said to his soldiers about how they should see him:

you should see in me nothing but myself: my resolution has gained nothing from my dictatorship, any more than it lost anything through exile. Nothing in any of us has changed and we bring the same qualities to this war as we brought to earlier ones. Let us then expect the same outcome. At the first clash everyone will act in accordance with his training and habit, you will win, they will run away. (VI 7)

There are two key political points that Camillus makes here. Firstly he denies any pride or ambition based on the offices he holds: he sees them as recognition of his merit rather than as an avenue to further power or to pride. He argues to his soldiers that they ought to obey him from recognition of his merit. What he secondly argues is that Romans in general should behave according to 'training and habit'- their constitution here fits with their military training and leads them to victory. The key point running through Camillus's arguments, whether about honour, himself or the training of his troops, was the argument that Romans should always behave in accordance with their ancestors: their history should be a check upon them.

For Livy, all these things define a virtuous Roman politician- someone granted power over his fellow citizens, occasionally arbitrary power, but aware of the ways that that power fits into a mosaic of historical custom. It also demonstrates a possible use for Livy's history- this is a guide to the princeps about how he should behave to preserve the 'training' of the Romans which has given them empire- then the Princeps, the Emperor, can become like Camillus, a temporary Republican sovereign, rather than a tyrant.